I didn't realise when I
visited Stringfellow's club last month that I was watching the last days of
an ancien régime. The girls still wore G-strings - how quaint! By the time
you read this they will be totally nude - except when they do their
pole-dancing for which, mercifully, G-strings will be resumed. Peter
Stringfellow finally got his nude table-dancing licence on 7 February - the
first ever granted by Westminster Council. He boasts that he was the first
person to introduce topless table-dancing to central London in 1996, and now
he is the first to bring nudity. Well done Peter! Après him, of course, le
déluge.
There is a sort of strip-club war going on at the moment with Peter
Stringfellow - who now counts as the Grand Old Man of Stripping and is
practically a national institution - being challenged by the younger and
possibly sharper John Gray, American head of the Spearmint Rhino chain. Gray
already has six clubs in Britain, 31 in the States and a new one in Moscow,
whereas Stringfellow has just the one, in St Martin's Lane, London. His
attempt to conquer America in the late 80s, when he opened clubs in New
York, Miami and Los Angeles, ended in bankruptcy in 1992, and he slunk back
to London with his tail between his legs. Luckily he was able to buy back
the lease of the original Stringfellows from the receivers, and has spent
the past seven years making it a success.
But, of course, success always brings imitators and now there are these
Rhinos charging in. They are much less strict than Stringfellows - the girls
dance for customers in private booths where presumably the old no-touching
rules go by the board. Stringfellow turns into Lady Bracknell at the mention
of the name: I don't talk about Spearmint Rhino - I have no respect for
their management. They are Wild West cowboys, they brought the backstreets
of LA to London - the fact that they've got a club in Moscow says it all.
I'm very keen to keep up our high standards of good taste and
respectability. You saw for yourself - you had fun, didn't you?'
Strip clubs are booming again and Stringfellow invites me to his club for dinner. What shall I wear? What does
one wear to a lapdancing club? I opt for the most flesh-concealing garment I
own. Stringfellow, of course, is dressed in a leopardskin jacket to match
the leopardskin upholstery on his 'throne' at the VIP table. Sartorially, he
reminds me of my old boss Bob Guccione of Penthouse and his role model, Hugh
Hefner - they all have the same taste for jungle prints, copious jewellery
and improbable hair. Stringfellow's famous mullet - which he calls a lion's
mane - is now silver rather than tawny, but the face-lift he had three years
ago is bearing up well. He swears by La Prairie moisturiser. He thinks he
doesn't look 61 and he is probably right - on the other hand, you would have
to be 61 to want to look like this.
My eyes are on stalks looking at all the lapdancers. There seem to be
about a million of them, but that's because of all the mirrors and also a
huge television screen showing the scene downstairs, so there is naked flesh
everywhere you look. Some of the girls are swinging round poles, others are
dancing up close to customers, others are trawling the room. Pace
Stringfellow, I wouldn't quite describe them as the most beautiful girls in
the world, but there are certainly some beauties among them, and a
fascinating variety of hair/skin/body types. I expected them all to be big
busty blondes with implants, but according to Stringfellow less than 20 per
cent of the girls have implants. Blondes probably predominate, but there are
also plenty of black, Eurasian, Oriental, Latin girls, and quite a few with
elegant, slender figures and no boobs at all. There is a weird little
Spanish girl in white ankle socks who looks like a child with two footballs
stuck down her dress. Then there is terrifying Leyla, a 6ft American Amazon
built like a rugby prop who attacks her pole as if she plans to pull the
whole building down. (Later, when I meet her, I ask her what sort of men she
appeals to and she says, 'Older men. I mean old.')
It is very hard to concentrate on eating when there is so much tumultuous
flesh going on, but actually the food is not bad. Stringfellow says he can't
understand it when he goes to The Ivy and sees a party of men eating
together, he thinks they'd be so much happier in his club. But perhaps they
don't want naked boobs with their meal, I try to explain, but he thinks I'm
only saying that because I'm a woman - he thinks all men want naked boobs
with their meal. This is where his world-view significantly differs from
mine, but we'll get on to that later.
Every few minutes, girls come up to kiss Stringfellow and then he passes
them on to me. Some of them are too shy or foreign to chat, but many of them
are extremely articulate. Clare, for instance, tells me she plans to train
as a psychotherapist when her dancing career is over, but meanwhile working
here is good practice for learning to listen sympathetically. That's what
she mainly does, she says - most of her regulars want her to chat rather
than dance - and on a good night she can make £1,000.
I find the money absolutely fascinating and, rather to Stringfellow's
annoyance, keep asking the girls about it - what's the best they've made in
a night? One says £1,200; several mention figures in the high hundreds. The
deal is they charge £10 for a dance, which is put in their garter, but they
also charge up to £200 an hour for sitting and talking to a man. But how do
they broach that? If a man asks them for a dance and then starts chatting,
how do they break it to him that this friendly conversation is going to cost
him £100 or £200? Apparently, most of the customers know the form, but if
they don't, the girl will chat to a man for a while for free and then say,
'I must go and dance to earn some money' and then he has the brilliant idea
of paying her not to go away.
In theory, customers can come into Stringfellows, pay the £10 entry fee
(before 10pm; £20 thereafter), have a drink, watch the girls, and be in and
out for £50. But in practice, they soon decide they want to ask a girl to
dance, and then they decide they want to chat, and in no time at all they're
handing in their credit card and collecting Stringfellows' Heavenly Money,
at which point they are hooked. At the other extreme are the money-no-object
merchants who will keep half a dozen girls at their table, give them £1,000
each and fill them with Dom Pérignon. There was one the other evening who
spent £12,000. The girls always tell Stringfellow when there's a 'man of
stature' in the club, and Stringfellow goes over and says hello, and sends
him some complimentary champagne, and invites him up for dinner in the VIP
area. But usually the man doesn't bother moving because he's fully draped
with girls. 'He enjoys the attention and the girls think he's wonderful,'
says Stringfellow and looks hurt when I splutter, 'Well, they would wouldn't
they?' No, he says, 'these are nice guys and the girls are genuinely
interested to meet them.' But they can't go home with a customer, however
much he spends - Stringfellow would lose his licence if they did.
The girls are self-employed and keep their own earnings. How then does
Stringfellow make a profit? I was still puzzling my pretty little head over
this when Stringfellow spelt it out for me - the girls pay to work here.
They pay £65 a night plus £15 hair and make-up fee, and there are always at
least 80 but sometimes more than 100 girls in the club. In addition, he
keeps the customers' entry fees, plus - and this must be the real icing on
the cake - 15 per cent commission on the aptly named Heavenly Money.
Our conversation is interrupted by the dazzling Deborah, a tall willowy
beauty in a long spiderweb dress, who looks like a blonde Louise Brooks.
Unfortunately, she seems to be mad. When I ask what she is interested in,
she gives me a loopy smile and says, 'Schizophrenia.' She says the film
producer Jerry Bruckheimer was in the other evening and she told him he
ought to make a film about schizophrenia. How did that go down? 'He seemed a
bit surprised.' I can imagine. Why is she so keen on schizophrenia? Another
of her weird smiles. 'Most people are depressed, right? Whereas
schizophrenia is exciting. I think it's kind of interesting to be two
people.' Uh huh. So then I give her a great lecture about how schizophrenia
is a very serious illness and she's a very silly girl to think there is
anything glamorous about it, and she drifts away, looking hurt.
'What did you make of Deborah?' asks Stringfellow. 'Well, gorgeous,
obviously - I can't understand why she's not a film star, but a bit...
weird.' 'Did she talk about schizophrenia?' Yes. 'She always does!' he
laughs. Then he says she used to be his girlfriend - she reigned for 18
months before his present girlfriend, Lucy Carr. And she still works here?
Extraordinary. So later when Stringfellow asks who I want to dance for me, I
tell him Deborah and he summons her back. But asking her to dance is
obviously a mistake - she seems as embarrassed as me - clearly I have a long
way to go in understanding the etiquette of lapdancing. But it serves the
desired purpose, because then Stringfellow tells her to take me on the tour
of the club and we have the chance for a tête-à-tête.
She takes me downstairs to the non-restaurant room which is much more
jam-packed and heaving, and asks me for a cigarette. Stringfellow has
already told me the girls are not allowed to smoke, but Deborah says she
doesn't care, so we perch on an armchair and light up. What was it like
going out with Stringfellow? ' Wonderful, the happiest 18 months of my
life!' But how can she bear to still work here and see him with someone
else? 'I like working here.' She wants to be an actress, and Stringfellow
paid for her to go to drama classes, but the parts haven't really come up
yet. 'I suppose it's a bit like acting being here,' I tell her. 'Yes!' she
agrees vehemently. 'I told you I was schizophrenic - I'm acting all the
time.'
Then we wander round the club, and she offers to show me the dressing
room. This is the second rule she has broken - no cigarettes, no taking
visitors to the dressing room - but she breezes in, and we find a lot of
girls watching what seems to be a porn movie on television. Deborah says it
is a documentary about rape, but I don't think you get long close-ups of
erect penises in documentaries, even on Channel 4. I am still arguing the
toss when a big man in a suit comes in and says smoothly, 'Seen what you
wanted?' and holds the door open for me. I scuttle through it very fast.
Yes it was fun, and pretty harmless as far as I could see. So why does he
want to jeopardise it by going nude? I suppose he feels he has to - if he
doesn't start it, then Spearmint Rhino will - but he is on a very slippery
slope. He says he will let the girls choose individually whether to keep
their G-strings on, but I don't imagine the G-strings will survive very long
among the nudes. And what will happen to my lovely Deborah? She seemed
embarrassed enough about taking her bra off - will she really want to flaunt
her fanny at the punters?
Even now, Stringfellow tends to wince if you call him a strip-club owner
- he says the term has 'connotations' that he doesn't like. There are hints
in his autobiography that he never really wanted to go into strip clubs in
the first place - he only started in New York because it offered the only
hope of staving off bankruptcy, but then he still went bankrupt anyway. At
heart, of course, he is a terrific prude, like Hugh Hefner, like Bob
Guccione - they always are, these flesh pedlars, they have to be, to retain
their drive. Stringfellow still finds it amazing - all these years and
girlfriends later - that girls will take their clothes off in public. 'The
world has gone sex mad!' he complains. 'I don't want to open my paper and
see girls with their boobs out! I am shocked by it!' He claims to have a
'Cliff Richard mentality' - presumably without the Christianity - and I know
what he means. He is not blasé - he is still at heart the Sheffield
schoolboy who got excited when a girl tucked her skirt in her knickers and
did a handstand.
He says he knew nothing about sex when he was growing up - he remembers
seeing his mother washing herself before going to hospital to have one of
his brothers (he is the eldest of four) and he gazed at her great pregnant
tummy with amazement, but she never let on there was a baby inside. He
practically fainted the first time a girl told him about periods. He says
that, going to an all-boys' school and having no sisters, he was always
inclined to put girls on pedestals - these fabulous exotic creatures who
would never pay him any attention. It was only when he opened his first hop
in a church hall in Sheffield in 1962 and stood there with the spotlight on
him and a microphone in his hand that the girls came flocking - he made love
to one of them in the back of his van that very first night.
Since then, he claims to have slept with more than 2,000 women, often
more than one a day - he recalls one particular week in Sheffield when he
deflowered five virgins. He says in his autobiography: 'Sex was and is my
release, my recreation and my drug. It's the one constant in my life, and
possibly the thing that's kept me sane.' Until recently, he could not go for
a day without sex - but now, he says, there's been a change. He has been
faithful to his girlfriend Lucy Carr for two whole years, and nowadays he
can spend a week by himself on his yacht in Ibiza without having sex at all.
Of course, given that he claims that the secret of monogamy is lying, there
is no particular reason to believe him, but somehow I do.
He sincerely believes that all men at heart are just like him and would
like nothing more than to look at lapdancers and bed beautiful girls all the
time. 'There's nobody any different to me; there's no man out there any
different to me. All that I have done_ I'm just unbridled, if you know what
I mean, whereas the majority of men are bridled, quite rightly.' I think
he's wrong - I think the number of men who are seriously keen on sex, as
opposed to saying they are, is actually quite small. He has the proof of it
in his own club - it is probably the one place in London where you can be
absolutely sure of not getting laid. So he is Mr Unbridled catering for the
bridled masses who prefer their sex in fantasy form. I hope the advent of
nudity doesn't bring him down to earth with a bump.
